Deposit: bottle return finder

Deposit helps you find a bottle return or can return near you, and tells you what each place takes back, so you get your deposit refund on the first trip. Return points are not interchangeable. One machine takes plastic bottles and cans but not glass, the next takes crates, and the shop down the road takes them back at the counter. Walking to the wrong one costs a trip, and the shop's own sign rarely says which it is until you are standing in front of it. It is not a map of recycling bins. A glass bank takes your bottles but pays no bottle deposit back, so it is left out. WHERE IT WORKS • The Netherlands: the return machines and what each one takes, crates included, a barcode check for whether a bottle or can carries a deposit, and search by address, postcode or city. • Michigan: every store that sells deposit drinks must take back the kinds it sells, often at the counter rather than at a machine, so the app shows supermarkets as places that take returns, alongside the machines OpenStreetMap knows about. • New York: the same as Michigan. Stores that sell deposit drinks take them back, often at the counter, and the app shows supermarkets beside the mapped machines. Standalone redemption centers are not on the map yet. • Anywhere else, the map shows the return machines OpenStreetMap knows about and guesses nothing. WHAT IT DOES • Shows deposit-return points near you, as a list ordered by distance or as a map • Tells you what each one accepts — glass, cans, plastic bottles, crates • Says when that is the source's own statement and when it is an assumption, so a guess never reads as a fact • Narrows the list to what is open now, in the place's own time zone • Keeps your favourites one tap away • Scans a barcode to check whether a Dutch bottle or can carries a deposit • Lets you report a machine that is full or broken, so the next person knows before they walk there • Opens directions in your maps app • Works offline from what it last downloaded, so a shop basement with no signal still answers WHERE THE DATA COMES FROM Locations come from OpenStreetMap, the open map of the world, and are used under the Open Database Licence. That means the data is public, correctable by anyone, and improves for everybody when it is fixed — including you. It also means it is incomplete in places: a machine that is missing from OpenStreetMap is missing here, and the app says so rather than pretending otherwise. PRIVACY No account. No advertising. Your exact position never leaves your phone: to find machines nearby, the app asks about a square of roughly one kilometre around you. If you report a problem or suggest a correction, that is kept on our server under a random token with no name attached, and you can delete it from the app. Crash reporting and analytics are off until you turn them on. Deposit is an independent app. It is not affiliated with Statiegeld Nederland or Verpact, and it is not the official statiegeld app.